


Fighting Blind

by LittleLinor



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Nagamas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerome, Lucina, and masks</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting Blind

**Author's Note:**

> Nagamas present to tumblr user shinykodakarp

A Queen should shine, brighter than the jewels of any crown, stand in magesty and command respect with a mere look.  
But Lucina is no queen, with her parents and kingdom torn from her, and Gerome has no talent for poetry. Her marvels are better sung by Inigo's honeyed mouth and Owain's extravagent tirades.  
Gerome becomes her shadow instead. A dark knight for a Princess of twilight, leading her people in stealth in a world on the edge of collapse. The weapon in her hand, the shield at her back, following her like he did ever since they were young and almost innocent (he doesn't remember Lucina ever really being innocent).  
And Lucina fights, more than he would have hoped, more than anyone, more than him, even. Fights for the lives of her people and the memory of her father and the faint hope that one day, they may reverse the fell dragon's awakening into one of their own.

A true knight would have fought to bring her honour. A lover would have covered her in jewels.  
Gerome gives Lucina a mask.  
Anonymity can be a better shield than any protection or armour, he knows, and though he hates the idea of dimming her light, the Brand of the Exhalt in her eye marks her always, binding her to her fallen throne as tightly as a thief's brand binds them to their crime. Chained, always, to what she was born to. It is a ray of hope, for all of them, but its beacon draws risen and Grimleal like moths. Better to hide it, he thinks, than risk it fading away forever.  
And yet, he cannot bring himself to hide her completely, covering her face with the same butterfly wings that shape her shield. A reminder, even in secrecy, of Lucina herself, the woman holding the sword.

They fight on, and Lucina still wears her face bare. Despite all his efforts, he cannot make himself dislike it.

The next time he sees the mask, it lies broken on the cloth she carefully wrapped it in, its wings flightless. The sight makes his stomach clench–not in sadness but in fear, an insidious fear that she might be next, that her own wings might be cut.  
But there is new hope in her eyes, a new light, the like of which he hadn't seen in all the years she had been carrying her parents' legacy. Perhaps it was time, then, for her to shed that skin.  
Gerome doesn't quite smile, but hides the warmth in his heart behind his own mask.  
She has grown stronger than him, then. There are things that he still can't shed.  
But maybe he can still fight from her shadow, until a time comes when she doesn't need him anymore.

Lucina stands in the shadow of a pillar, on the eve of a new world. A child's laugh makes the halls hum, and for a second, Gerome almost thinks it comes from Lucina herself.  
But the happiness on her face is a bittersweet one, content and tired and lost in the face of a world that suddenly brimming with possibilities.  
He hesitates. The world is big, and a lone warrior could easily hide his face within it, keep to shadowy corners for the rest of his life. Lucina fingers her Falchion pensively, looks up, and starts walking.  
In the few hurried moments it takes him to catch up with her, his fingers have worked open the fastenings on his mask.  
Lucina smiles, and the blinding light framing her is as striking as her strength, her beauty.

They step outside.


End file.
